“PRAY WITHOUT CEASING”
- When life is easy, pray.
- When we open our eyes in the morning, pray.
- In the toughest life-moments, pray.
- When someone is struggling, pray.
- Whenever God reveals Himself to another and they know Him as Savior, pray.
- When life is beyond bearable, pray.
- When we just don’t know what to do or where to turn, pray.
- In days of fun and happiness, pray.
- In seasons of pain and suffering, pray.
- As we stand at the casket of someone we love, pray.
- As we sit and hold our baby, pray.
- When we hold hands and prepare to eat, pray.
- When we know we need to make an important decision, pray.
- When we are given a request from another, pray.
- When we sense a need, pray.
- When we are filled with the overwhelming joy of the LORD, pray.
- When we open God’s Word, pray.
- When we know a hurt, deep in our heart, pray.
- Whenever & Wherever & Whatever we experience within our days of life, we should always ”pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5: 17)
Go with me for a moment, back in time, to the years when I was in my late twenties. See a young, married girl, one who had been married for thirteen years, one who desired the gift of a child. Feel her pain, when month-after-month, the answer remained the same: No!
Sense her pain when she found it almost impossible to find joy in celebrating Mother’s Day.
Hear her prayer when she said, “LORD, I promise, if you give me a child to love as mine, I promise God to not complain when YOU take this child far away, even if you take her to Africa, still I will not complain. I promise LORD. Please give me a child to love.”
That was me. That was the vow I remember making in 1998.
God said, “YES, child, I hear your vow, your promise.”
In 1998 when I became pregnant (after years of marriage and after years of wishing for a child), little did I know the TRUE BLESSINGS God had in store for my life. But God knew!
- When we took home our bundle of joy in late January, on the day before our thirteenth wedding anniversary, I remembered the way I had prayed for this request, over and over, without ceasing, & I also remembered my vow to the LORD.
- Our little baby has grown into a beautiful woman.
- As she grew, I remembered my vow.
- As she encouraged us to receive a foreign exchange student into our home, I remembered my vow.
- In 2015, when another girl, a student from Europe moved into our home, into the bedroom adjacent to our daughter’s, I remembered my vow.
- As our daughter graduated high school in 2016 and entered the university, I remembered my vow.
- As my heart grew to deeply love this foreign exchange student, like my own daughter, I remembered my vow.
- As this FE daughter, also conceived and born to another family in 1998, the same year of my vow for a child—I remembered my vow.
- As this FE daughter traveled back home, I remembered my vow.
- As our daughter continued her college studies and met a boy and fell in love, I remembered my vow.
- As our daughter traveled abroad, I remembered my vow.
- As she married, I remembered my vow.
- As God took her 5,000+ miles away to live in Europe, I remembered my vow.
I—RECALLED—MY VOW, MY PROMISE—TO GOD.
“LORD, I promise, if you give me a child to love as mine, I promise God to not complain when YOU take this child far away, even if you take her to Africa, still I will not complain. I promise LORD. Please give me a child to love.”
I did not realize in the moment of my vow how God causes miracles to occur every single day. We just need to keep our eyes upon Him to see His miracles as they occur.
I saw my daughter receive Christ into her heart there in the hallway one evening during Vacation Bible School. I remember thinking, ‘God, is now when YOU will cause me to live out my promise, my vow, to YOU as she feels the call to missions upon her life?’
That was in 2008 when she was nine, & that was long before 2015 when our FE daughter moved into our home and into my heart.
As I said, years later, I sat with my daughter, listening to her speak about a young man she had fallen in love with, a man who she wished to marry. I remembered my promise to God as this young man, her now-husband, moved her 5,000 miles away from me.
Years later, as I sat at my kitchen table one summer day, talking and enjoying a conversation with my FE daughter, I clearly heard her say, “Mom, I think I want to travel to Africa, farther away from you for a while. Mom, even though it’s farther away, still we will be able to talk, but I think I want to work with children there who need a teacher.”
While I was sitting at my kitchen table, I looked into her face that day, and praised my Father above in heaven, and felt the tears rolling down my face.
“What’s wrong, mom? Why are you crying?”
It was there in that moment that I heard God clearly say, “Daughter, you asked for a child back in 1998, and instead I gave you two, even though they were born into two separate homes. I knew child, even when you did not know.”
That day, my LORD spoke to my heart again and I found myself rejoicing and thanking my LORD as I suddenly remembered my vow.
How can we know when the LORD is calling another to know Him as Savior?
Can we see it upon their faces?
Can we sense it within their actions and reactions?
Would we hear it within their spoken words?
Would we feel it within their silence?
How would we know? &
Even, how would we respond—If we sensed it, if we felt the LORD calling out to another to be healed from their sins, to accept Him as Savior, to be offered the opportunity to receive His eternal sealing of their soul forevermore?
Would we know if God were speaking—to another person’s soul to become His?
We should “pray without ceasing”—as in EVERY SINGLE DAY & THROUGHOUT EVERY MOMENT of EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Charity Gayle sings a wonderful melody “WE NEED A MIRACLE.”
Please listen this day.
- We should awake and pray, seeking God first as we arise from our bed, thanking Him for the gift of another day.
- In the minutes and hours as we read God’s Holy Word, we should pray, thanking God for the truth, asking Him to teach us more and more.
- We should pray & be walking so closely with the LORD that we could actually bump into His holy back as we walk forward throughout our day.
- Then as we sit down to enjoy a meal, we should feel His hand there holding ours when we bow to pray.
- As we work the day through and as we encounter others, we should seek God there too, constantly talking with Him as we go.
- Later, as we take a walk with our husband, when the day’s light fades into night, we should pray, feeling God there beside us, loving us even within the ordinary moments of our everyday life.
- Much later, as the evening becomes night & as we place our head upon our pillow, there too, we should pray, seeking His presence as we enjoy the rest He provides found within the dark of the night. Even there, we can pause and say—
“Thank YOU, Father, for going with me throughout my day, and Father, YOU know my concerns, my hurts, and my desires for those who do not yet know YOU as Savior. Please speak to them, LORD, so they can experience this deep joy and wonderful-working peace that permeates our soul. Father, thank YOU for the saving grace YOU provided & thank YOU in advance for the miracle YOU will do in this one’s soul who we are praying for at this moment. Please soften her heart, heal her anxiety, and knock so loudly that she hears YOU and opens her heart-door to know YOU. We pray, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Thank you for joining me in this memory of a vow I made, of answered prayers, & of the way we know—It is God, alone, who brings us to know Him.
So, I leave us with this Scripture, one that reminds me this morning of God’s blessing of His Amazing Grace.
Please see with me the Word of our LORD.
“Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, nor had the word of the LORD yet been revealed to him.
So the LORD called Samuel again for the third time.
And he arose and went to Eli [the prophet] and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.”
Then Eli discerned that the LORD was calling the boy
[the child he had come to love].
And Eli said to Samuel, ‘Go lie down, and it shall be if He calls you, that you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for Your servant is listening.’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.“
(1 Samuel 3: 7-9)